Some quick scribblings from a recent experience.
Dedicated to Rachel Held Evans who showed me the beauty of broken unbelief.
Let me hear it for a church built not on belief
but on brokenness.
belief is unsteady.
(sometimes I can claim it and proclaim it
sometimes I unfurl clasped hands
and find nothing.)
At all times though
I am broken
Proclamations and clasped hands or otherwise
I am broken.
Ask me to enter a church with my belief neatly packaged up
it’s too much
Ask me to enter a church with my brokenness
and it’s too much
for anywhere but here
(what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in)
“this is my body broken for you”
a broken offering not a creed
a call to be whole in Christ
not correct in doctrine.
Praise Christ who is unwavering in what is demanded
who says to desire is as much of a betrayal as adultery
who tells the rich to sell all for the poor
and yet knows us
says, “no one is good but God”.
An unachievable, compulsory ethic
tell me, with this,
who could stand before God?
if Christ did not stand before us
Christ who says, “this is my body broken for you”
Unbelievable.
So let me hear it
for a church not built on belief,
but on the broken,
clutching a broken body.
